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GOD'S WAYS UNSEARCHABLE." 



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k DISCOURSE, 

ON THE DEATH OF PRESIDENT 11NC0LN, 

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PREACHED BSFORt THE 



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JN MOZART HALL, PITTSBURGH, PA. 



SUNDAY, APRIL 23d, 1865 



R»v. HERRICK JOHNSON, Pastor. 



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W. *. Johnston k Co., Petaten, Stationers and Waok Book Makers, »Y Wood Street, Pittsburgh. 



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GOD'S WAYS UNSEARCHABLE." 



(he depths of the riches, both of the wisdom and Icncwledge of God I 
IIow unsearchable are his judgments and his ways past finding out! 
For who hath known the mind of the Ix)id ? or, who hath been his 
counsellor ? or, who hath first given to him and it shall be recom- 
pensed unto him again? For of him and through him and to him 
are all thivgs ; to whom be glory forever. Amen. — Rom. XI: 33-30. 

It was with these words, my people, that I had thought to lead you 
in a jubilant song of triumph and of praise. I had already selected them 
as the basis of a discourse commemorative of our recent victories. But 
while I paused for official hand to write proclamation of thanksgiving, 
summoning the people to their altars with offerings of grateful joy, that 
hand grew cold and stiff in death. The spirit that moved it, now praises 
God, I trust, in such golden speech as is coined in the mint of heaven. 
But a bereaved and stricken nation has no heart for gladness. The 
tumultuous acclaim over martial triumphs, is hushed in the billows of a 
great grief. Shotted salutes for victories give place to minute guns of 
woe. Our carol is changed to a plaint. Our paeans of joy to wails of 
sorrow. Chords are struck in the peoples hearts that vibrate only to> 
mournful music. The nation is in sackcloth. And to day we weep our 
tears over the bier that contains all that was mortal of our beloved and 
honored Chief Magistrate, Abraham Lincoln. 

Yet the words, who?e consideration I had deemed appropriate toa 
Jay of thanksgiving, strike me as alike consonant with the changed cir- 
sum8tances in which we now come to our altars. The great truth they 
embody is as fitted to stay pur hearts in the shock of disappointment, as 
to inspire our hearts in the gladness of achieved success. Indeed, this 
last act of the bloody drama, whose changing scenes we have witnessed for 
four years with such terrible interest, gives completer illustration than any 
act that has gone before it, of the truth«that God's judgments are unsearch- 
able and his ways past finding out. And no other event in the whole 
history of the war has given such startling emphasis to the question, Who 
hath known the mind of the Lord? or, who hath been his counsellor? 
While better than by our victories will it be for us to be brought by this 
great woe to a clearer recognition of God, and even out of our stony 
grief to say, "Of him and through him and to him are all things : to whom 
ke glory forever. Amen." 

That God reigns, that in the government of human affairs he has a 
plan, and that the accomplishment of that plan is by judgments un- 
searchable and ways past finding out — ways not ours and of which we have 



had no thought or conception, until their revelation has struck men dumb 
with astonishment and bewildering wonder — are truths emphasized and 
•orroborated with remarkable frequency and remarkable power ever since 
the outbreak of our civil war. 

The war itself, in its scope and significance, in its length and vastness 
and unlooked for results, in its waste and desolation and havoc, in its high 
and grand redemption, is a thing of which we never dreamed. So 
•pposed to human expectation has it been — so unlike the prophecy both of 
friend and foe — so contrary to the purpose both of loyal and disloyal hearts. 
Our newly sworn President was right, when he said, in full recognition of 
the dealings of an inscrutable Providence, " I shall not attempt to antici- 
pate the future. Had any man gifted with pre-science, four years ago 
uttered and written down in advance the events of this period, the story 
would have appeared more marvelous than anything in the Arabian 
Nights." More marvelous indeed. Fiction sinks into the utterest and 
tamest common-place before these wonders of fact. 

We of the North thought to lay the strong iron hand of the Government 
down upon this petty revolt and crush it in ninety days. God's way was 
to soak our soil with gore and redden our rivers with blood, and thicken 
the very air with groans for four long years, before we should subdue it. 
They of the South thought to call the roll of their slaves at Bunker Hill. 
God's way was that the roll of those slaves should be called under the 
folds of a free flag, as soldiers of the Army of the Union. And thus it 
has been all through these trying years. We have thought our ways ac- 
eordant with the will of God, and they have proven to be athwart it. "We 
have deemed ourselves wise in forecasting {lie future, and events as they 
have transpired, have written us fools for prophecy. We have sought to 
be counsellors of the Lord, and he has been his own, bringing to pass his 
unsearchable judgments amidst such amazing surprises, and by foiling 
schemes so ripe for execution, and when it seemed as if the very hour had 
struck for their success, that the instinctive feeling cf even irreligious men 
1 :: been, It is the Lord's doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes. 

A bare enumeiation of events that go to substantiate this idea, is 
impossible in the brief hour allotted to this discourse. The simplest ref : 
erence to a few of the most signal and prominent must suffice. 

The first mortifying failure of our arms at Pull Pun may be instanced 
as proof of our ignorance of the mind of the Lord. 

And right upon the heel of that national humiliation, the people's cry 
was fur a Leader. We were ready to make an idol of him who should 
redeem us from' that grdat shame, by marshaling our armed hosts and 
leading them out to victory. Tde man came whem we thought equal to 
the crisis, and we were almost run mad with hero-worship. The country 
with his idolatrous praise. Put God broke our idol to our faces. 
And he has not allowed us to enthrone another since. The honors of vic- 
tory have been so divided and shared by those in civil and military 
ion, mat the nation is in no danger of being sweptawayby a passion- 
ate idolatry, or of bowing down to a hero as to a god confessed. Even 
the lamented dead, notwithstanding his promiuenee and personal worthi- 
ness, and conspicuous agency and commanding influence^, was always made 
by an inscrubllc Providence to appear in the eyes of the people simply as 



the Lord' 8 instrument, I deem it a thing of God, that r. o man in the 
cabinet or in the field, has been thrust to euch unrivaled eminence and been 
permitted to bear off so many and such peerless honors, as to leave us a 
nation of idolaters, with our trust in an arm of flesh. To day, more truly 
than ever, we bow and believe, as in the hush of silence, in awe of this 
new projf of the mysterious ways of God, we listen to a voice from the 
openiDg heavens, saying, "Be still, and know that I am (rod. I will be 
exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth." 

Still further is it seen that the judgments of the most High are unsearch- 
able in this : that while in the beginuing of the strife we sent heralds and 
proclamations in advance of our armies, announcing to traitors that the 
institution which had given birth to treason, and nursed the foul offspring 
until it grew strong enough to attempt the life of the nation, was not to be 
interfered with, God's purpose was to make this war the instrument of so 
upheaving that institution, that of its foundations, not one stone should be 
left upon another. Fools and blind at first, we found out the way of ihe 
Lord at last, and he, whose tongue shall never speak God's truth to the 
nation again, made official recognition of it, in words that should be engra- 
ven on our hearts forever. Solemnly, reverently, as if moved by an 
impulse from on high, he said in his late inaugural, " If God wills that 
this mighty scourge of war continue until all the wealth piled by the bond- 
man's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and 
until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another 
drawn with the BWOrd, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must 
be said, that the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether." 

Little dreamed that Child of Providence, and man of the people, as he 
stood there on the platform ereeted over the steps of the East entrance of 
the Capitol, his forehead kissed by the sun-light that came streaming down 
through the rifted clouds from heaven, and that rested there on that 
bronzed and (are-worn brow, as if it were a smile from God — little dream- 
ed he, interpreting the ways of the Almighty in those memorable words, 
that his own blood was a part of the price to be paid for tho bondman's 
years of suffering and unrequited toil. Lut God so willed it. And for . 
this more than for all else, an awe-struck people, through their blinding 
tears, look up and say, " How unsearchable are thy judgments, and thy 
ways past finding out." 

Ah, here indeed, God's-thought was not our thought. If, at this par- 
ticular juncture in our affairs, we had been asked, who of the honored and 
trusted leaders could least be spared, we should all have answered Abraham 
Lincoln. Yet this was not. the way of the Lord. In His sight, he could 
best be spared. Linked as he was with every national interest, conspicu- 
ous as he appeared in all that concerned the welfare of the Republic, kept 
as he had been through perils seen and unseen, essential as he seemed t© 
the completion of the work he had so modestly, and yet so grandly begun 
and prosecuted, the Chief of the Nation, the trusted/ leader of'a regenera- 
ted and disenthralled people, the proved pilot who had brought the Ship of 
State through storms, whose howling fierceness and tempestuous wrath 
blanched every cheek, the God-fearing and God-honoring man, wedded to 
liberty by a devotion that made him prefer death to its surrender, touching 
the throbbing pulses of the people's hearts to regulate his own, so true to- 



truth, so free from malice, so calm amidst the troubled sea of passion that 
roared and surged around him, so cautious and conscientious in reaching 
decision, yet so immovable when once resolved, so like a child in guileless- 
ness, yet so stanch in moral frame, as if his nature were ribbed and 
muscled with eternal truth, leaning on the hearts of his countrymen with 
•nly less confidence than he leaned on the right arm of God, one of "the 
wisest, virtubusest, discreetest, best" of all earth's rulers — who would hav.» 
prophesied that he would be moving" through the commonwealths of the 
•ountry to-day, speaking only from his shroud? Who of us thought on 
the morning of April 14th, as we grasped the cup of thanksgiving, that it 
would so soon be dashed from us, and this wine of bitterness pressed to our 
lips? It was God's thought, my hearers. If we had been his counsellors, 
we should have known it all. But lie is a God that hideth himself, and 
his judgments are unsearchable. Canst thou by searching find out God ? 
Canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection? And His ways are as 
inscrutable as his being is. This last, the most inscrutable of all. The 
saddest that ever concerned our nation. The bitterest, ftaifullest stroko 
©fall the war. Over it, brave, strong men have sobbed amost to 
heart-break. On account of it, little children have hushed their gleeful 
laugh and cried in the slr*et. Because of it, the poor freedmen have 
gathered the shreds of crape and muslin swept from the doors of the rich, 
and sewed them together and stretched them across the doors and windows 
of their own rude homes, to symbolize their humble but sincere sorrow. 
An old gray-haired negress, held her little grand-ehild above the heads of 
the crowd thronging to take a last look of the fallen form of the martyr- 
President, faying, in deep emotion, "she wanted that little child to see the 
man that made her free." Hardly hud there been such lamentation in the 
land, had the first- born in every house been slain. 

0, we seem to see him now, that high pure soul, who could say he "never 
willingly planted a thorn in any man's bosom," as he stood before the nation 
when about to take his first official oath, pleading with the South to pause, 
ere they plunged the country into an abyss of blood and horror. "In your 
hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen," said he, "and not in mine, is the 
momentous issue of civil war. The Government will not assail you. You 
can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You have 
no oath registered in heaven to destroy the government, while I shall hav<- 
the most solemn one to 'preserve, protect and defend' it. I am loth to 
dose. We are not enemies, but friends. . We must not be enemies. 
Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. 
The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field and patriot 
grave to every living heart and hearth-stone all over this broad land, will 
yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will 
be, by the better angels of our nature." It was thus he closed the most 
affecting appeal ever made to a disaffected party against the madness and 
crime of treason. l>ut, alas! the better angels of the hearts to whom he 
made appeal had left them, and fell spirits of evil struck the chords. 

He stood there again, the loved and trusted President, to take his second 
oath. The rude shock had come. The country had gone down into 
the dark abyss, but was emerging now ou the other side. Still, however, 
the path onward was rugged and bloody and full of peril. Have four 



years of war, wick such hate and passion, and scorn and calumny, and 
cruel, bitter defamation as have been born of them, tainted that high, pure 
soul v or put a thought of malice in it? Let the closing words of his last 
inaugural answer. ' * "With malice toward none, with charity for all, with" 
firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to 
finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him 
who shall have borac the battle and for his widow and orphans : to do all 
which may achieve a just and a lasting peace among ourselves and with 
all nations."' There speaks the same gentle, loving, merciful heart, that 
so affect ionately and touchingly pleaded ere full armed treason plunged the 
nation into the horrors of this fratricidal strife. Vindictive wrath and 
hate have done their worst, but tliey have waked no echo in his bosom. 
Abraham Lincoln lia* firmer ho'd of truth and God and the people's hearts. 
That t'r „/;. 

A few wei-ks later, and the Ruler, who, of all the men that ever lived, 
made war with a Christian spirit, was seeking, under the inspiration of deci- 
sive victory, with paternal and generous magnanimity, his heart full of 
rharitio and pardons, to effect conciliation. The nation knew that that man- 
liest and gentlest of spirits w;.s opposed to all avoidable severity, and the 
advocate of largest overtures of mercy to the criminal assailants. At the 
very threshold of the gate of peace he was about to open, he was brutally 
and cowardly assassiuated. With forgiveness in his heart for them, and a 
plea for their pardon on his lips, they shot him dead and muriWrcd mercy. 
There is nothing in all the records of regicides or annals of crime that 
transcends this, save the scene at Golgotha, where, from the bloody cross 
on which his murderers had nailed him, and amidst their jeers and scoff-. 
the lips of tlu dying Son of God moved with the prayer, " Father forgive 
them : they know not what they do." 

It was most foul and atrocious deed To name it is to expose its malig- 
nity and horror. And yet, — and yet, my hearers, though his charities and 
nobilities and virtues, all "plead like angels, trumpet-tongued, against the 
deep damnation of his taking off,'' it was best that he should die. Best, 
bee; use God's way, not ours. Best, not for the assassin. " It must needs 
l>e that offences come. But ico to thqt man by whom the offence comet h. v 
The name of J. Wilkes Booth is iudissolubly and forever linked with that 
of him of whom Jesus said, " It had been good for fhat man if he had not 
been born." Best, not for the South. The gloved hand of justice and power 
is naked now, and it is of iron. But best for the great cause of God. It 
was God's way, not ours. //« was not taken by surprise. He is not disap- 
pointed. A thousand swift messengers of His could have sped from the 
four winds of heaven, from earth and air and sea and sky, to' foil the foul 
plot, though it were laid with all the craft and subtlety of hell, if He had 
so willed. If He controls armies and organizes victory for them, may he 
not control men ! If He winged the arrow, shot from a bow at a venture, 
which smote the king of Israel between the joints of the harness, has he 
nothing to do with the fatal ball of the fire-arm in the hand of a ruffianly 
assassin! If it was His providence that called our beloved Chief Magistrate 
to the kingdom for such a time as this, was it not His providence that bade 
the faithful servant " come up higher," when his work was done? We 
wonder, indeed, that the thunderbolts of God were still, when that arm was 



raised to do the cruel, deadly deed of causeless murder; but that infinitely 
wise and holy purposes will be answered by it, it is not permitted us to 
doubt. For of him and through and to him are all things. 

Gathered about the fallen form of our lamented President, we fortify 
our hearts with this sublimest truth, and re-dedicate ourselves to the work 
in which he dieJ a martyr. Beneath the laurel and the willow the bowed 
heart of the nation pays its tribute of unutterable sorrow to the memory 
of its loved and lost leader. Like Moses, he had brought us through the 
wilderness. Like Moses, in the midst of all our perils and trials, "he 
endured as seeing him who is invisible." Like Moses, he did not escape 
the murmurings of the people. May God forgive us, if our complaints 
laid one added burden on his poor, patient, loving heart. He was per- 
mitted at last to climb Pisgah s height, and to ravish his sight with the 
golden vision of union and peace. That deep, sad, sorrowful eye of his 
was lighted up with the dawn of a morning he had prayed and longed for 
all our dark night, the darkest through which nation ever passed to day. 
Upon the summit of the mount he stood and looked, and he was not — for 
God took him. 

• There are no broken lives in God's plan. Abraham Lincoln's had 
rounded into perfect completeness, and he was called home. Sacred 
be the commonwealth that entombs him. The gentle flowers of the 
prairie make room for his grave. And not another in all the earth 
shall ever be bedewed with the tears of a people's prouder or fonder 
affection. Rear cenotaphs, to his memory, 0, mourniag but redeemed 
nation ! Let wreaths of fadeless laurel be woven for his burial place. 
Yet, know that his deeds shall be his noblest monument ; and believe that 
God has given him " truer crown than any wreath that man can weave 
him." 

And now, what to the living? This, first and most [Manifestly: Our 
trust is not to be in cm arm of jlexh, but in the living God. " Cease ye 
from mau whose breath is in his nostrils ; for wherein is he to be accounted 
of?" When Massillon stood in that crowded cathedral by the coffin of a 
King, and saw lying there the cold and shrouded form of him whose will 
millions had obeyed and feared, he lifted his hand to heaven and said, — 
"God only is great." On Friday, April 14, Abraham Lincoln, in all 
the investitures of power, was the peer or superior of any King on earth. 
"But in a night, shorn of every vestige of authority, he passed, a naked 
human soul, to the bar of God. His commanding career, the increasing 
marvel of the world, was ended by a pistol shot. The impersonated malice 
and hate of treason's fell spirit, changed the commander-in chief of a half 
million armed nscn, and the civil ruler of thirty millions of people, to a 
lump of lifeless clay. "God ©nly is great." And God is not dead. 
Truth and God never die. With Him the nations are as a drop of a bucket 
— lie taketh up the isles as a very little thing. He hringeth the princes 
to nothing: lie maketh the judges of the earth as vanity. He putteth 
down one and setteth up another But there are no changes on thai 
throne. lie lives and rules who has kept us thus far, and svhose right 
arm of power no one felt need of, more than the lamented dead. We 
have lost our President — but the President's God is our God still. "Trust- 
him, ye people," is one of tho voices out of the midst of the cloud. 



• This, secondly, is to be said concerning the event that has draped the 
land with symbols of sorrow : It has given another signal vindication of 
Republican institutions — -of government by the people. Liberty takes on 
new courage from this hour forth. She has received a new baptism of 
blood, and lives : and assurance deepens in men's hearts that she is placed 
beyond the manacle and the sword of her foes, now and forever. 

No doubt the assassins thought to make such record that dark night of 
death and blood as should lead to national dismemberment. They looked 
for division in consequence of the anarchy they hoped to effect. Ah, the 
murderous blow struck away all our past differences and welded us into 
compactcst unity. Over the dead body of the slaughtered Chief, a united 
people took renewed oath of consecration to finish the work which he died 
in doing. Four hours after his spirit took its flight, the official oath was 
administered to his lawful successor, and the Government moved on with- 
out jostle or pause. Great financial revulsions, and the overthrow of 
public credit would have been the almost inevitable effect of such an occur- 
rence in many nations of the Old World. But even this most sensitive- 
fiber of our system su'l derangement whatever from the shock. 
Revolution would follow swift in the wake of such assassination in France. 
Here, the wheels pf government are not stopped for a moment. Neither 
the permanency of our institutions nor the regular administration of our 
laws is in the slightest degree affected. It is impossible to estimate the 
weight this fact will carry with it, among despotisms. Out of this last 
and saddest trial the Republic has come, more wedded to its cause, more 
true to its fundamental idea, more united in its purpose, to root out every 
fiber and vestige of rebellion, than ever. Who shall doubt that the fruit 
of. its past shall pale before, the glorious yielding of its future, when such 
martyr-blood 1ms moistened its toil. 



uidst of the cloud is this : that 'he spirit of 
all ' 



this rebellion is revealed before au the world as most malignant and atro- 
cious. Perhaps this last exhibition was needed, in the providence of God, 
to keep the plotters of treason from playing the role of martyrs. Jt puts 
an eternal stigma upon their cause and sends it down to po.-tcrity loaded 
with infamy. 

The plot of assassination may not be traced to the leaders of the rebel- 
lion. I trust it will not be. Possibly they did not know of this foul con- 
spiracy. But it was born of their spirit. It had its aspiration in their 
madness. It was the culmination of their savage and uod-defying rage. 
And it is as indissolubly linked and welded to their cause, as if they them- 
selves were the proven and principal actors. Ah, if they did not do the deed, 
they gave the doers some bloody instructions. Proposals for Sir. Lincoln's 
assassination were coolly and openly made in the South, and circulated 
without word of remonstrance through leading journals, even before his 
first inauguration. This was in the midst of wholesale perjury, through 
repudiation of their official oaths And crime has since been linked to 
crime. They have starved and murdered our prisoners. They have 
sought to fire the largest metropolis of the nation, full of helpless women 
and children. Thy have waged their deadly strife by acts wholly outside 



10 



the pale of civilized warfare. Truly they had been guilty of crimson hor- 
rors enough, to make this last not 60 utterly beyond their agency and 
connivance. 

And what was their treason itself? Was it anything less than that of 
whi< h this crime is the personification ? Was not that a blow at the Na- 
tion's heart? And did it not mean death to the Nation, as truly as the 
blow that struck down its head and chief? Perhaps there was danger of 
our forgetting this, and of failing to regard this great wrong of treason 
with cur righteous abhorrence. Perhaps we were growing too oblivious 
of the fact that association in cirme involves individual guilt. Such coun- 
tenance do masses give to great iniquities. So common is it to lessen our 
estimation of the heinousness of damning deeds, where great communities 
and organized though rebellious governments are the doers. But that 
danger, I believe, is past. 'Henceforth, forever, by this last accursed pi jt r 
born of the spirit of slavery, itself the child of hell, God in his providence 
has made this rebellion so odious and abominable in men's eyes, that loy- 
alty to this free government will be a thing they dare not trifle with. 
When this blow fell, planned in the interests of treason, it struck both 
ways. It slew our President, indeed, but the backward stroke branded 
the brows of the leaders of this dark conspiracy with the braud of Cain. 
Fugitives and vagabonds shall they be in the earth, though they escape 
the halter. The voice of the blood of the martyred President, and the 
voice of the blood of thousands more, as truly martyrs as he, will cry unto 
them from the ground ; and though their hoarded gold buy them the 
privileges of a dwelling place on some spot of earth, they will go down 
with sorrow to the grave, their punishment greater than they can bear. 

There comes another voice out of the midst of the cloud — justice! 
There is such a thing. God is just. Justice is the habitation of his 
throne — yea, its foundation His government rests upon it. His law 
rests upon it. There can be no government, human or divine, if justice 
be ignored. Men's moral convictions are on its side. Within their bosoms 
is implanted of God the love of it. They do net always know justice. 
And when they do know it they do not always conform to it. They are 
taken in some swoop of passion, or are over-attracted by the magnet of the 
affections, or they get in some bog of sickly sentimentality, and are biased 
and blinded. But justice is, naturally, to. the conscience, as light is to the 
«ye, or truth to the intellect, or sentiment to the heart. Thus constituted, 
we must be true%o it, or false to our own nature and so false to God. It 
is as much our duty to do justly, as to love mercy and to walk humbly. 

This quality has relation to law. If law is mere advice, justice is a 
farce. If law is command, sustained by penalty for its violation, then 
justice is vindicated as" a reality. In human government this is so. In 
God's government. If in either, penalty is laid aside, without meeting the 
claims of law and vindicating justice, sooner or later, there will be anarchy 
and chaos. Calvary's cross and Calvary's victint, that divinest proof of 
love and forgiveness God ever gave the world, was possible, only as inex- 
orable justice there poised her scales. The innocent Sufferer would never 
have prayed "Father forgive them," if his sufferings and death were not 
even then mnking hjust for God to forgive. 



11 

Gr -lilt, therefore, must be expiated. Crime must be atouod for. Offend- 
ers against law, must suffer the penalties of law. To the extent that we 
fail of exacting this up to the utmost requirements of the public safety and 
the g n' ral good, to that extt nt we harm justice and open upon ourselves 
the flo id-gates of lawlessness. " The soul that sinneth, it shall die," is not 
an arbitrary edict of naked power, but the enunciation of a principle pro- 
•eedin.' from the very nature and being of God. 

Perh ips we were in danger of ignoring this fundamental quality. I 
think w! were. In our joy at the prospect of peace, and on account of the 
difficult! es that surrounde 1 the whole question of the settlement of the pro- 
tracted strife, we were being led to feel and act as if secession was not a 
great crime. Under the inspiration of victory, we were tempted by undue 
leniency to hide the infamy and the ruin of the rebel leaders, .and to palli- 
ate the criminality ol their course. It may be that we were on the point 
of taking back a nest of vipers into our bosom to nurse them, there until 
they gathered envenomed power sufficient to strike at our heart again. 
We all know the breast of our smitten chief did never shut its gates of 
mercy on them. That humanest heart of his was full of charities. And 
though I believe he would sooner have died than purposely betrayed jus- 
tice, perhaps his was too kindly a nature for the stern work of righteous 
retribution, that God has especially commissioned governments to execute 
upon evil doers. So Gol took him away from war's tumults and from 
retribution's ungrateful eflice, — home. 

Hut his taking off. by wicked instrument, was a startling and terrible 
revelation of rebel malignity. And the sharp rep irt of that deadly pistol 
shot has flashed the word justice through the Nation's heart 0, dug it 
not seem that God would thus write on our national records, in the blood 
of a martyred President, that treason is the highest and the blackest of 
crimes, and that its punishment must be adequate and inevitable. 

Surely this is one of the interpretations to be put upon the event wc 
mourn to-day. Hut let it he justice, not vengeance. "Vengeance is mine, 
I will repay," saith the Lord. Personally, we have no right to cherish 
other than the spirit o! forgiveness, and from our heart of hearts to pray 
tor them. And in our governmental capacity, as a power ordained of God, 
we are to bear the sword with the Bolenin investitures that befit such hi"h 
ordainment. Blind passion, illegal violence, reckless dealing out of retri- 
bution, will only defeat the ends of. justice, and lift the conspirators in the 
eyes of mankind, from the ignominious doom of traitors, into the welcome 
elevation of heroic martyrs. 

No. Let the grave of Abraham Lincoln be unpolluted by the blood 
<>f Americans slaughtered for revenge. Uut, if the culprits shall at last b« 
brought under the police arm of national power, with all the solemnities 
of high judicial process, let them be proceeded against; and adjudged 
guilty of treason, as they wdl be, solemnly, holily, before the nation, and 
the world, and God, let us express our righteous abhorrence of their crlms 
by meting out its righteous penalty. Thus shall we show that national 
honor and unity and life are held so precious, that no man or men shall 
causelessly put them in peril and go free from punishment. Thus shafl 
we show that loyalty to this government of freemen is a sacred and para- 
mount obligation, to be thrown off only less easily than loyalty to God. 
Of whom and through* whom and to whom are all thing? ; to whom be 
glory forever. Amcii. 






->: 



LB S '12 



